The Man From Madrid. Anne Weale
inside her.
Then, like the red light that flickered in the notification area of her computer’s monitor screen when her virus protection program detected something nasty in an email attachment, a voice in her head said, Watch it! This guy is dangerously attractive.
The berenjenas were followed by lamb cutlets with brown earthenware bowls of the vegetables that the Spanish usually served separately but the British liked to accompany their meat course.
Finally, there was a choice of puddings: Juanita’s homemade flan, Mrs Haig’s home-made ice cream, or Cally’s fruit salad, laced with kirsch.
‘You give excellent value for money,’ said Nicolás, who had waited for her to sit down before starting to eat his flan.
‘We try to. It’s the way to bring people back. But we have strong competition from other casas rurales in the region. What made you choose this one and how did you find us?’
‘I read a book by Rafael Cebrián about the mountains in this area. He describes a place called the Barranc de L’Infern, which sounds an interesting challenge. Have you heard of it?’
Cally nodded. The name meant the ravine of hell and everything she had heard made it sound a place to avoid. ‘There’ve been several accidents there…some of them fatal. It’s particularly dangerous after rain. You shouldn’t attempt it alone. You might never get out.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m going to go through with some guys who know what they’re doing.’ He paused, looking into her eyes with a curiously intent expression. ‘But I’m glad you’re concerned for my safety. When I arrived here, I had the feeling you didn’t much like the look of me.’
This was so far from her first reaction on seeing him—that he was the most fanciable male she had seen in a long time—that she almost laughed.
Instead she said coolly, ‘I’m sorry if I seemed unwelcoming. I didn’t mean to. Excuse me, I need to attend to the coffee.’
In the kitchen, Juanita said, ‘How long is he staying, the Madrileño?’
‘Three nights. How do you know he’s from Madrid?’
‘His voice…his manners…his air. He’s very handsome, don’t you think?’
‘Paco is handsome,’ said Cally, referring to the best-looking young man in the village who was a worry to his mother and had broken several girls’ hearts.
‘Paco es uno desgraciado,’ said Juanita contemptuously. ‘You can’t compare that good for nothing with a man of education and breeding. I worked for the upper classes when I was young. I recognise a gentleman when I see one.’
‘You’re a snob,’ Cally told her, smiling. ‘There are as many bad lots among the rich and the aristocrats as among ordinary people. Probably more.’
‘That’s true,’ the cook conceded. ‘They’re no better…but also no worse. Wouldn’t you rather be a rich man’s pampered wife than a poor man’s slave like your mother?’
She was devoted to Mary Haig but, having herself had a husband who spent too much time in bars, took a disapproving view of Douglas.
‘I would rather stand on my own feet and be independent,’ said Cally.
‘You can say that now, while you’re still at your best. You won’t always be young and attractive. A time will come when you’ll want some babies and a man to keep you warm in bed. I know you have a fine career in London, but when you are thirty-five you may not find it so satisfying.’
At the dining table, Nicolás was listening to Peggy but thinking about Cally. He had perfected the art of seeming to be engrossed by older women’s conversation while following his own train of thought at his mother’s dinner parties. Sometimes she roped him in to fill a gap and, though such occasions bored him, he felt an obligation to help her out when he could.
His mother was very rich, and had once been a beauty, but now she was deeply unhappy because cosmetic surgery could not preserve the ravishing face she had had in her youth and none of her husbands and lovers had lived up to her expectations. So now she was a pill junkie, filling her days with meaningless social engagements and pouring out her troubles to several shrinks and any of her five children who could be persuaded to listen to a tale of woe heard many times before.
Seeing at a glance that Cally’s father was what his American friends called a lush, Nicolás wondered why a girl of her obvious intelligence was wasting herself as a maid of all work in the backwoods of rural Spain. With her ear for languages, there must be better things for her to do.
He saw her coming back with the coffee tray and sprang up to take it from her.
‘Oh…thank you.’ When their fingers touched as she surrendered the tray to him, a charming flush gave her cheeks an apricot glow.
She wasn’t tanned like the other women. Her complexion suggested she spent little time in the sun. He preferred her creamy pallor to the almost orange colour of Peggy’s skin. Cally was like a solitary lily in a bed of garish African marigolds, he thought. Not that he disliked his fellow guests. He admired their courage in uprooting and transplanting themselves. They were enjoying their lives, more than could be said for his mother in her palacio in Madrid, or indeed for most of his bored and world-weary relations.
When Cally went to bed, most of the guests had already gone to their rooms. But her father, the man called Bob and Nicolás were still talking and drinking in the lounge. Nicolás was not drinking as much as the other two. In fact he had had only two or three glasses the whole evening. He wasn’t talking as much either, just asking the occasional question and listening intently to their replies.
She hoped he would go to his room soon, before it became obvious her father had drunk too much.
In bed, she turned with relief to the book she was reading, an out-of-print history of the early days of air travel that she found far more absorbing than the current crop of short-lived bestsellers. When the church clock struck eleven for the first time, she put it aside and turned out her bedside lamp. By the time, a few minutes later, it repeated the eleven chimes, she was settled down ready to sleep.
But when it began to strike midnight she was still awake, her mind in a whirl of uncertainty about the future. At half-past midnight she got up, shrugged on a thin cotton robe and took her small torch from the bedside table.
There were no sounds from below as she padded barefoot down the stairs, the tiled treads cool under her soles. The ground floor was in darkness. Someone, probably not her father, had remembered to switch out the lights.
In the office, she booted up the desktop computer she used while she was here and logged on to the Internet, hoping there might be an email from Nicola.
Nicola and her husband were both publishers. Richard Russell was the head of a big firm, Barking & Dollis, and Nicola was co-director of Trio, a much smaller firm. Having been through the misery of redundancy herself—in fact she had been sacked by the man who was now her adoring husband—Nicola was sympathetic to Cally’s anxieties and had promised to let her know if she heard any book trade gossip concerning Cally’s new boss.
Disappointed when no emails downloaded, Cally went to a favourite website that supplied links to the world of arts and letters. But there was nothing new there and, frustrated, she shut down the machine and went to the kitchen for a glass of water.
Three clean wine glasses were standing upside down on one of the worktops. Had Bob washed and dried them? She doubted it. His wife had said during dinner that he was useless in the kitchen.
That meant that the Madrileño, as Juanita called him, must have dealt with them. Which also meant that he had stayed in the lounge until her father finally called it a day. Cringing at the thought of Nicolás seeing her father in his cups, and perhaps even assisting his unsteady progress up the staircase, Cally put the glasses away.
Everything he had said and done had supported Juanita’s conviction that he